There surely isn’t a more intimate festival venue than La Mama on Carlton’s Faraday Street. For an audience receptive to an evening of close-up comedy, this is the ideal theatre. Although for a performer, the nearness of the viewers must border on claustrophobic. I can’t help but have the utmost respect for Sue Ingleton who braved the La Mama stage without so much as a flicker of apprehension in what was the first night of her show’s run.

You’d expect nothing less from a woman whose bio paints her as ‘Australia’s leading political feminist comedian’. Ingleton’s presence is commanding without ever being overbearing.

The show’s greatest strength lies in Ingleton’s ability to flawlessly pass from one distinctive character’the coarse but compassionate Bill Rawlings’to the other, the doddering but not-quite-as-vague-as-she-makes-out Edith Wise. By using both these characters as well as her own out-of-character personal experiences, Ingleton presents some gently amusing observations about the peculiarities of old age.

It probably goes without saying that The First Step on a Tram is Hell is not a show aimed at the same people who will be going to see Danny Bhoy or Stephen K Amos. It will not appeal to them. However, the show targets, and deserves, a niche in the Melbourne International Comedy Festival ‘market’. It is certainly recommended if intimacy and a lack of antiseptic polish are what you’re looking for in your comedy-going adventures.

Finished reading this article? You might also like:

• The Bedroom Philosopher – Songs from the 86 Tram
• Pastor Michael’s Second Coming (& His Wife Comes Too)
• Glenn Wool: Where Is Hell?